Zero Waste Rebranding

We’re in the process of refreshing the branding at Clover. But you may not have noticed. And that’s by design. I’m trying to do this logo refresh in a zero-waste approach. Typically when companies decide to change their branding they tear up signs, throw away packaging, throw away menus, etc. It’s really wasteful. I got to thinking: can we do this re-fresh without any waste?

Last year we revisited our logo design. We hired Perky Brothers. They’d done the branding for Little Wolf. This type of work is called “brand identity” or “identity” work in the industry and extends from design of the logo itself to color and other design systems. We love Little Wolf’s packaging and website. They were happy to introduce us to Jeff at Perky and we got started in earnest about a year ago.

I was really fixed on a few things I saw as issues with our current logo:

It looks terrible/ illegible at small scale —> becoming a big deal for us

We never had an iconic representation for Clover. We needed this for some square applications of our logo, including the button for our new Clover App that customers use to order food from our restaurants

No “Food Lab.” We used “food lab” in the early days. Then ditched that and went with just “Clover.” But after a few years we found that customers still called us (and searched for us online as “Clover Food Lab” so we brought that back. But it wasn’t reflected in the logo

I was ready for something fresh

Perky did really amazing work. I love working with them. And I’m hesitant to say that here because I’m hoping Jeff doesn’t become too busy for Clover as you all rush their way for all of your branding and design needs. But Jeff really is brilliant and his team has been amazing.

We decided to stay focused on an incremental design. One of the benefits here is that we can allow the old and new logo to co-exist. Why does that matter? Because now we can make this change without creating any waste. You will see over coming months that new signs include the new logo. The website and app are about to be updated. Our packaging with transition to the new logo/ design. It will be incremental and spread over time, and zero waste.

Old logo:

New logo:

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